Not much interesting happening on the adoption front. Just gathering papers and typing letters and things along those lines. Our final home study meeting is on Tuesday.
3 of the Bethany families with referrals now have their court dates - July 11th. If they pass through court successfully the first time, they can begin their travel plans to go get their children! 1 more family has received their referral for a preschool aged boy. We are definitely seeing things start to move in the Ethiopia program!

Home Visit

Things went fabulous! The house was clean, and the kids were unusually calm and quiet. We finished everything we needed to finish. We had to answer a lot of questions about each other and our families. It went really fast, mostly because we are so boring! We turned in all of our foster home licensing paper work, as well as our training certificates. We have one more visit with her on July 1st (Kennedi's 3rd B-day!) and then we will be done with our home study. Our foster home application will be mailed by Alison (SW) on Friday and we should receive our license within four weeks. At that point we can get our USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) packet and start the Dossier!

one of the requirements by our agency is that we complete 10 hours of online training. I am pleased to say the we have finished that! (OK, I have finished, Jay has about 2 hours left!) Our next meeting is on Wed. June 18th. This one will be at our house. Those of you that have seen my house understand why this might be a point of stress for me! Also, she will meet the kids. Another point of stress! I'm never quite certain what may come out of Tyler's mouth!! He has left me speechless on more than one occasion.

2 more families from the Bethany boards have received their referrals!! One is for an infant girl, and the other is for a 1 1/2 year old boy! It is so exciting to watch people progress through the process. These referrals came about 6 month earlier than expected!

Social Worker Meeting #1

The meeting last night went really well. We rec'd all sorts of new paper work to wade through and got a lot of questions answered. In our state you must first become a licensed foster home before you can adopt. So that is our next step. With the current time line of papers being sent to the appropriate offices, signed, sealed, resent and everything else that is involved, she said we are looking at September before our completed Dossier will be sent to Ethiopia.
Bethany has now established a relationship with two additional orphanages in Ethiopia so that should lower the waiting time for a referral. (At least that is what everyone is hoping!)